


strawberries and cream

by mermistia



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Crying, Death, F/F, Guilt, Magical Corruption, Mental Breakdown, Post-Canon, and i was like “oh shit u right”, i was gonna post smth harry x audrey but then my brain was like “but shes a lesbian”, idk how good this is binch it’s 2:30am and i am TIRED, so idk if i wanna post that anymore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 06:36:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20238373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mermistia/pseuds/mermistia
Summary: Audrey isgone,gone,g̷̩͈͋ơ̵͚͎̾̓͆́̽̔̕͝n̸̲̜͇̹̦͖͔̟͙̰̓̃̀͒͊̌̍̌e̷͈͖̩͑̉̔͠.It’s hard for Mal to accept.





	strawberries and cream

**Author's Note:**

> i am tired and gay and i like evil women

It’s quiet. 

Mal supposes that that’s normal. It should be quiet, really, now that Audrey isn’t there. There’s no one to occupy her bedroom anymore, no one to lay out hair straighteners and brushes across the desk, no one to build up a pile of pink clothes on the bed as they try to choose what to wear.

Mal shuts the door with a click, and breathes in the silence. 

There’s a distinct smell that’s quick to hit her, sweet and summery and sugary and perfectly Audrey, and an immediate tear comes into her eye as she recognises it as Audrey’s signature perfume. Sweet like strawberries and sugary like cream, and summery and wonderful like Audrey used to be. It’s overwhelming almost immediately, and she chokes back a sob at the sudden memory of their first meeting; Audrey, clinging tightly to Ben’s arm. Mal, cynical and annoyed. Forced laughter and instant rivalry and purple leather and pink dresses and sweet soft perfume that filled the air. 

It _hurts._ She hadn’t expected remembering it all to _hurt._

She’d never been close with Audrey and that was partially her own fault. She knew that. She had dismissed her and ignored her, and publicly humiliated her with love spells and love confessions. Honestly, she couldn’t really blame Audrey for hating her. It hurts to think about that, too. _Hate._ Hatred and arguments and jealousy, all over a _boy._ A royal boy, a king, a boy with the key to ruling Auradon, but still just a _boy._

“This was never worth it,” she whispers, and traces her hands along the rim of Audrey’s dressing table. It’s already started to gather dust. Mal smiles. Audrey would hate that, the dust and slow decay and despair that was beginning to creep into her room. “I’ll keep this place clean for you,” she says, and trails fingers over a bottle of perfume, smiling at the soft pink colour of the liquid inside. Everything just seems so perfectly Audrey; neat and pink and pristine, just how Audrey always was. The room fits her perfectly.

A green flicker of sparks dance at Mal’s fingertips, and she waves her hand in time with murmured words. “A princess’ cleanliness is simply a must, so rid this room of dirt and dust.” It’s a stupid spell, one that she’s just made up on the spot, and she’s not even really expecting it to work, so she’s pleasantly surprised when the dust underneath her hands disappears instantaneously. 

“There,” she says with another soft whisper, and pushes the perfume bottle so that it sits parallel with the mirror. There’s a creaking sound from next to her, soft and sudden and slightly horror movie-ish, and Mal looks up with a small jump. Audrey’s wardrobe slides open smoothly, as if a strange magical spell of invisible hands is pulling it, and an avalanche of clothes spill out onto the floor. Pink and blue and purple and white create a mess on the floor, and the thin layers of dust coating the fabric begin to swirl up in a circle and disappear, the cleaning spell still not finished. The clothes rise up from the floor, flying and spinning and returning to their hangers one by one, and Mal jumps backwards, almost tripping over in her heels as a dress whizzes past her, startlingly close to her face. “Shit!”

She covers her mouth almost immediately, slapping a hand over her face and squeezing her eyes shut. It can’t be allowed to curse in a princess’s room, surely, though she knows that Audrey would never have abided by that rule. A sad laugh escapes her as she imagines it, Audrey sat curled up on the bed, Jane or maybe Lonnie by her side, as she sends out a string of swears directed at both nothing and everything in particular. Mal can almost hear it. Can almost hear the annoyance and anger and contempt and misery in Audrey’s voice, and hot tears begin to spill over her cheeks at the painful reminder that at least some of that misery was her fault. Part of Audrey’s pain was her fault, and Mal slides onto the floor and crumples into a ball, running hands through her hair and over her skin and against her clothes, squeezing and pulling and holding right, too tight, until her nails dig into the skin and leave a series of shallow red marks there.

“I’m sorry,” she says, softly and quietly and with a voice broken by sobs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she repeats, and it gets louder, until her eyes are glowing green and her hands are pulling at her hair and her voice is a painful scream of anguish. It’s a lot, it’s too much, it’s too much to be here surrounded by so much perfume and so much pink and so many clothes and so much _Audrey,_ so much Audrey, as if she’s still here, but she’s not she’s not she’s not because she’s _dead._

Mal screams again at that, at the memory of cold skin and purple hair and closed eyes and soft lips that she’ll never be able to touch, lying dormant at the top of a tower next to her mother’s sceptre. Pink outfits and green magic and eye contact that always lasted just a second too long, staring contests with a pair of eyes that Mal will never see again, and she leans back against the dressing table, ignoring the uncomfortable way that it digs through her dress into her back as she pulls her knees close to her body, burying her tear stained face into them. 

“I didn’t mean it,” she says, and her voice is so croaky and quiet that she’s not even sure she did say it. It may as well have just been in her imagination, and she can’t say she really minds that anyway, because she knows that saying it out loud doesn’t achieve anything anyway.

She didn’t mean it.

She didn’t mean it.

She didn’t mean it.

But she still did it, and Audrey is

gone, 

gone, 

g̷̩͈͋ơ̵͚͎̾̓͆́̽̔̕͝n̸̲̜͇̹̦͖͔̟͙̰̓̃̀͒͊̌̍̌e̷͈͖̩͑̉̔͠.

Mal’s eyes are still glowing. She can feel it, heating up inside her head, her mother’s magic and her father’s magic and her own magic coursing through her veins, and she stands up slowly on shaking legs. She throws the last of Audrey’s clothes back into her wardrobe with nothing but the blink of a gleaming green eye, sprays bursts of Audrey’s perfume across her chest and her wrists and down her neck, coating herself with Audrey’s scent. It hurts, the perfume feels like fire that burns her skin with the memories, but she keeps spraying and spraying until half of the bottle is gone and she can’t bear any more of the liquid to touch her body. It drips down her, across her collarbone and down her chest, below the hem of her dress, sweet and sticky and strong, and she wipes a little of it away and spreads it over her palm. The fact that she now smells like Audrey is just as comforting as it is painful, and with a flash of magic, she turns to see Audrey, body perfectly still, sleeping soundly in her bed.

“I’ll take care of you,” Mal says, and her heels create a soft sound on the floor as she moves over to the bed. She takes a seat beside Audrey, nestling comfortably on top of the covers, and bends down to press a soft kiss to Audrey’s head. It doesn’t last long, lips pulling away from skin almost as quickly as they connected with it, and Mal smiles gently. A trail of blood slips down Audrey’s face, streaming from her mess of purple hair down to her cheek, staining her skin and her makeup with a dark ugly red, and Mal frowns. “Can’t have that,” she mutters, and wipes it away gently, flicking it onto the carpet and leaving red spots of liquid there. 

Audrey doesn’t move at the touch, and Mal makes a point to ignore the limpness of her body and the coldness of her skin, pressing another quick kiss to each of Audrey’s cheeks and then to the tip of her nose. “You’ll be safe here. I’ll protect you.”

There’s still no answer, and Mal shakes off the silence with a crack of her neck. Her eyes light up a stronger green, fire dancing in the irises, and she doesn’t look away from Audrey as green flames begin to dance up her arms and over the bed, coating the room in a roaring fire that doesn’t burn or hurt to touch. Mal doesn’t flinch as it covers her skin, but she growls in anger when the flames dare to begin to touch Audrey, and sends them away to the other side of the room with a flick of her hand. 

“Stop,” she says, her voice more than a little cold despite the warmth in her eyes as she looks at the princess, and the fire dies down immediately, changing and morphing into a series of thick vines, growing and twisting up the walls. They slink out through the windows, under the doors, knotting and linking together to form a wall, completed by the sharp spikes that grow from them, pointing in every direction and promising death to anyone who tries to get past them. 

“You’ll be safe here,” Mal says again, and she’s so lost in her own magic, in her own words, in Audrey, that she barely notices her clothes darkening, turning black as if they’ve been stained, her nails growing longer and sharper, twisting into jagged claws that could cut with a single swipe, horns growing from her head, black and sharp and short. “You’ve been hurt enough,” she says, and her voice drops to a low whisper. “I’ve hurt you enough. No one else will.”

Mal waves a hand in a complicated movement, spinning a web of green sparks, and Audrey’s hands close over her chest, a pale pink rose clutched tightly between her fingers. Her hands clench against it against their will, squeezing the stalk and pressing it close to her chest, the thorns beginning to dig into her hands and tear tiny holes into the material of her clothes. “New outfit,” Mal murmurs, and waves her hand again, and Audrey’s clothes flutter and shift from the look of the evil queen to a soft pink nightgown, glittery with silk and shimmering diamonds. “Just like your mother.”

The last of the magic fades away from Audrey’s body, leaving her resting peacefully, and Mal hesitates before crashing her lips down on Audrey’s, almost crushing the flower between them. She holds the kiss for a second, a second, a second,

one,

two,

three,

and then pulls away, holding strands of Audrey’s hair desperately in her fists. She’s crying again, and tears drop down from her cheeks and land on Audrey’s, and she lets out a broken wail as Audrey remains gone, gone, gone, forever, with nothing to bring her back. 

“Work,” Mal says, and presses her lips to Audrey’s again, and again, and again, hard and fast and and useless, desperate for it to _work, please work,_ until she collapses by the side of the bed in defeat. “So, I’m not your true love,” she says with a humourless laugh, and buries her face in her hands, careful to not let her claws anywhere near her eyes. “I can’t bring you back, I just can’t, and I’m _sorry._ I’m sorry, Audrey.”

It hits Mal yet again, all at once, the realness of the situation, and the way it can’t be changed or fixed. The way that there’s no going back. The way that she can’t have Audrey back, with her soft lips and piercing eyes and happy laugh, her terrifying anger and broken words and her god awful, world-ending want to be dangerous. “I can’t have you back,” Mal says, and her voice is flat and emotionless, and yet somehow still on the brink of tears. “And if I can’t have that...”

The vines grow taller. Audrey’s rose wilts. Mal’s eyes glow brighter. A scream sounds from outside, a shout for Mal from a voice that sounds like Evie, and Mal ignores it with a wave of her hand and a quick spell to cause silence. 

Her horns grow. 

Her claws sharpen. 

Her eyes glow, glow, glow. 

T̷̯̣͓́̈́̿̈́͂ḩ̵͓͑̀̎̓͐͋̽̒̕͝ͅê̵̟̼̯̽̈́̀̕ȳ̷͕̟̞̘̣͚̩̽ͅ’̸̯͎͌̇̂̽̎́̕͝r̵͓̟̻̪͙͓̟͊̾̃̅͛̈̾̚͘͠è̵̖̗̅͜ ̶̞͕̟̼̳̭̟̘̙̝͒̃̓̕̚g̴̙̀̾͒̓̽͊͝ó̸͓͈̩̟͔̰͙͇̉̐̅̾̐͜͠͠͠ͅn̴͎͍̫͇̑̇͛́̿n̸̢̧̛̫̰͎̤̤͈͇͑͝a̵̡̭̳̦̩͈͈̱̯̽͑ͅ ̸̧̬̬̳̻̄̏̌̉̏̔b̷̧̮͙̥̖̯̩̋̐͑͗̕͜o̵̻̓̐̋̀̅͑w̷̗͒̌͆̽̽̀̈́ ̸̛̰̘̋͆̓t̴̮͔̗̥̹́͌͘ǫ̵̺̫͓͐̎̋͠͝ ̷̡̹͖̖̻̲̊͗̉̂̏͗̆t̷̡̝̬̫̄͜ͅh̶͚̬̥̐͝ͅe̶̢̫̺̲̹̎͐̈́͋́͘ ̴̨̨̮̬̫̒͌͌̔͝͝ḛ̸̹͔̻́͛͘͜v̶̡͎̲̫̔̂́̒̍̀ͅi̴̡̯̠͕̘̩̞̰͒͌ĺ̷̥̝̫̬̹̯̗̯̿̚ͅ ̵̨̼͖͚͖͎̩̳͌́͗̕͝ͅq̶̛̛͕̖͔͔̹̘̫̼̭͊̉̒͂̆̋̕ͅu̸̡̡͈̺͓̭̐ë̵̞̳́̐̎͐̒̆̕͠e̸̗͚̐̽̌̊͗̍n̵͖̥͙͈͖̻̟̬͗̈̈́̔̀́̕ͅ.̵͎̜̏̽̈́͋

**Author's Note:**

> anyway! im suffering 
> 
> y’all know the drill im @mermistia on tumblr and that’s all the notes im doing bc a bitch needs to sleep


End file.
